


As Above, So Below

by Fudgyokra



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: (of the mild sort), Drama, Drama & Romance, Dreams, Ficlet, Introspection, Love/Hate, M/M, Prophetic Dreams, Rain, Romance, Wet Dream, can they be both??, sort of, too many rainy scenes sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 04:05:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: There was water above and water below, but nothing in between them.





	As Above, So Below

**Author's Note:**

> What’s going on in this? I have no idea. I just wrote it down and hoped for the best. I got the idea for the second half of this from Tumblr user literallyabstract, who proposed a very intriguing idea that stuck in my head. They specifically mention Leto’s Joker and Affleck’s Batman, but this fic works with mostly any incarnation.

When Bruce had his first chance in weeks to get a full night’s rest, he might have guessed that such a peaceful lull in his life would never be gifted. It was more of a tantalizing deception than a promise, dangled in front of him though it might have been.

In his newly-quieted mind, he saw a flash of an image: the Joker’s hands, dramatically white against the dark Kevlar of Bruce’s suit. He had his palms resting on the other man’s chest, and was regarding him like he was daring him to move.

Alfred, who had come to rescue the teacup and saucer from Bruce’s bedroom, watched somberly as the man’s eyelids twitched and creased with mental exertion. Silent as ever, he tidied the nightstand, retrieved what he’d come for, and left the younger man alone just as he liked to be: in the middle of the king-sized bed, black sheets twisted around him, alone in the dark.

Bruce’s sleep grew more fitful as his dream world surfaced clearly around him.

It was a violent kind of darkness in which Bruce found himself—the kind that promised hard times and often a good, bloody battle. His dream-self was lumbering through air that felt like molasses. It was hard to breathe, and it was oppressive.

He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he became aware that the hands on his chest belonged to the Joker, but it was not long after that he realized those hands were peeling off layers of his armor like they were nothing more than stickers. Bruce flinched when the first piece hit the ground. There was a thud that he felt but didn’t hear, which is what broke him out of his ill-timed reverie.

Before he could will his sluggish form to fight, the two of them were suddenly falling through a pitch-black sky. He often had dreams about falling, since he was used to the imagery of his city—ugly, old and cruel—whizzing by his head both in dreams and in life. It wasn’t the falling that scared him, but who he was falling with.

He and Joker plunged into the sea. Bruce could taste the brine and feel the beachy air making his skin sticky, a feeling he’d always hated. The sky was dark but the water was darker, encompassing his now naked form like a blanket. Everything felt cozier than it had any right to be, but that didn’t change the fact that he was— God, he was being watched. Leered at, in fact.

Joker’s eyes were sea-glass green, wild and charged with something that made the little hairs on Bruce’s neck stand up. When he opened his mouth to speak, he felt the weight of Joker’s fingers, gloved in white, slip into his mouth and advance toward the back of his throat. His chest was suddenly rising and falling with the frequency of a drowning man.

Bruce couldn’t remember when it started to rain, but it was coming down heavily now and pattering loudly as it met the waves.

There was water above and water below, but nothing in between them.

Then why was it so goddamned hot in this place? It was like he was muddling through a feverish world where his limbs only worked half as well as he wanted them to.

Right as dream-Joker’s mouth curled against the shell of his ear, working through the beginnings of a lascivious comment with heated breath, Bruce gasped in a sudden breath of his own.

He had been asleep for three hours. All at once, the dream he’d been having dragged him from the recesses of REM and back into the world of the living. He was naked and tangled in the sheets, slicked in sweat with a heaving chest. A halfway-pleasant pressure in his lower abdomen made the sense of creeping dread he was getting dawn completely.

No matter how tired he got, he would not allow himself to fall back to sleep for the rest of the night.

//

It had been a very long time since the Joker had aroused suspicion in Gotham, but his dream must have been an omen. Every day had its dawn, and so the clown prince of crime arrived, hanging out of the driver’s side window as his car skidded across the asphalt. Where Bruce expected splendorous laughter, he was met only with silence as the vehicle hit a post and sank the night into rubber-scented fog.

Out of the fiery wreckage, like the devil himself, Joker appeared before him. Bruce stood with his fists clenched, ready to pounce.

Across the shiny, rain-slicked street, Joker was standing at ease. Something was __off__  about it, and it took Bruce a moment to realize that the man was not smiling. He was serious, perhaps even grim, and that spelled deadly in the eyes of the Batman.

A thin, pale hand disappeared into a pocket and reappeared brandishing a small gun, but Bruce did not come to his senses just yet. This was by no means a leap of faith, but Joker did not look in the mood to play and something about that attracted Bruce’s curiosity.

He let the weapon clatter to the ground. 

Bruce narrowed his eyes, and Joker’s widened the slightest fraction, acknowledging the gesture. Something about this was definitely wrong, but Bruce couldn’t explain why.

Their gaze was locked tightly, even when the clown reached into his sleeve and gingerly removed a hidden jackknife. Like the gun before it, he dropped it to the ground.

After each weapon that Joker discarded, the thunderclouds above moved millimeters closer. He was getting rid of everything harmful that he had on his person, and Bruce wasn’t sure what he was trying to prove. He waited for the punchline to this unorthodox joke, but it never came. What he got instead was a heated look that held captive emotions of all different natures.

Longing and hatred. Relief and disdain. Infatuation and penitence.

The small pile of knives, guns, and explosives at his feet was the largest white flag that Bruce had ever seen the man wave.

Just like in his dream, Bruce could not seem to recall when it started raining on them, just that it was suddenly coming down abundantly. Joker began crossing the distance between them with slow, deliberate steps, ignoring the segments of wet hair that were hanging in his face. He was still looking at him, with a hungry sort of look that Bruce recognized from all the wrong kinds of late nights he’d ever had, with all the wrong kinds of women he’d ever met.

It was more than that, though; whatever this was, it had commanded the Joker to be silent. The intensity of his stare made Bruce feel vulnerable even beneath the cowl, and he wasn’t sure he liked that.

“What’s your game?” he growled.

The image of pale skin against black Kevlar was back in the forefront of his brain, only now it was actually happening, tangible and in the moment. Joker wrapped thin arms around Bruce’s shoulders with delicate execution, leading that smothered sensation to jump back into Bruce’s throat. Like a dream. He wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad one.

Joker’s lips were hot against his ear; he could feel it the same way he had the night before. This time he was tooaware and too high-strung to miss the near-silent whisper that escaped from them.

“I missed you,” the man said, succinctly. And that was all he needed to say before Bruce realized that they had become __this__  long before this moment. The fitful sleep he’d had with the damning dream was a long time coming, and he was only now beginning to see it.

In a way, this was Joker asking him for help.

In a worse way, this was Joker asking to help him.

Bruce almost mechanically lifted his cape to create a barrier from the rain and wrapped it around the other like one would a coat for a lover. It wouldn’t do for him to get sick, anyway, he reasoned, since Arkham was a cesspool of germs and nurses that did little to aid in any betterment.

Before he could think better of the situation (or rather, before he could think worse of Arkham), they were trudging through the puddles in the parking lot outside the warehouse where Joker liked to stay.

Bruce waited for him to go inside, his feet two inches deep in a puddle of rainwater, and Joker stood with his hand on the knob, regarding him as seriously as before.

Then, slowly, he smiled. When it wasn’t malicious it looked out of place, almost as if it took up less space than his usual grin. The loud personality came through, but in a way Bruce was loath to say he found relieving.

There was water above and water below, but the only thing separating them now was a single concrete step.

Bruce was never one to give in to temptation, so Joker, eyes alight, took the bait. He stepped away from the door, back to the man and looked up at him through his lashes suggestively. “You know,” he said with off-putting softness, “I had a dream about you last night.”

He left it at that, and so Bruce watched with bated breath as the man disappeared into the warehouse.

With hardly any words and not an ounce of violence coming from the crime lord, Bruce realized that the night would remain tame. He might even have another shot at getting to sleep. He also realized, during his drive back to the mansion, that this time he may actually get that full night’s rest.


End file.
